The Tennessee football Volunteers should reject the 2020 COVID-19 “plus one” proposal.
Phillip Fulmer’s answer should be a hard-no from the start. Very few, if any programs will hurt more than Tennessee football will if the “plus one” schedule proposed by the SEC, Big 12 and ACC goes into effect.
Dennis Dodd of CBS Sports reported Wednesday that the proposal involves the conferences coming together for each team to play its standard schedule plus one team from one of the other conferences. Amid coronavirus, this is a way to preserve rivalry games if teams get rid of non-conference play for 2020.
Basically, every SEC team would play its eight SEC games plus one team from one of the other conferences. This keeps protected rivalries like Florida-Florida State, Georgia-Georgia Tech, Kentucky-Louisville and South Carolina-Clemson on the slate.
However, it also preserves big games between the conferences that were already on the slate for 2020, and one of them is Tennessee football at the Oklahoma Sooners. When it comes to Fulmer and Jeremy Pruitt, this is completely unfair.
Rocky Top is trying to take another step forward in Pruitt’s third season. How in the world are they supposed to do that with a brutal SEC slate and then their only non-conference game being against a team that has made three straight College Football Playoff appearances? The Vols already get the Alabama Crimson Tide from the SEC West on a yearly basis.
It’s one thing if you’re not in the SEC or if your non-conference opponent is on your level or beneath where you currently are. For instance, right now, the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets are beneath the Georgia Bulldogs, the Florida State Seminoles are beneath the Florida Gators and the Louisville Cardinals are at best on the Kentucky Wildcats’ level.
At this moment, though, nobody will accuse the Vols of being on Oklahoma’s level, and they have to face the Sooners in Norman. They are a team that needs those easier non-conference games or just to go without conference play to have a chance at an improved season.
UT is not the only program that should be complaining either. The South Carolina Gamecocks should protests this at all costs since they have to face the Clemson Tigers, another perennial CFP team. Also, the Arkansas Razorbacks and OleMiss Rebels have to face the Notre Dame Fighting Irish and Baylor Bears respectively, and both teams got 11 wins.
Those four teams are facing opponents way out of their league for their big non-conference game in 2020. They may be facing the four toughest non-conference teams of anybody in the league as well. Only the LSU Tigers, who face the Texas Longhorns, could claim to be on that level. But LSU is at a level where it can compete with Texas.
Meanwhile, the Mississippi State Bulldogs get to play the N.C. State Wolfpack, and the Auburn Tigers get to play the North Carolina Tar Heels. Both are at worst toss-up games for those two SEC teams.
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As of right now, we don’t know what will happen with the Missouri Tigers, as their big game is the BYU Cougars. Meanwhile, the Texas A&M Aggies and Alabama Crimson Tide had their games canceled against the Colorado Buffaloes and USC Trojans respectively.
Still, if this plan goes into effect, it’s almost impossible for Alabama and A&M to face elite teams that aren’t already taken by other SEC teams. As a result, there’s no way around it. Tennessee football gets an extremely raw deal out of this proposal.
In what universe could the Vols have a respectable record where they play nine games and have four of them against top 10 teams? Pruitt’s program is nowhere near a top 10 program yet, even if it’s developing at a good pace.
Sure, FSU and Georgia Tech could complain about Florida and Georgia. But they will have lots more winnable games on their ACC slate than UT will have on its SEC slate. That’s just a fact of where both conferences stand.
Objectively, Tennessee football and South Carolina were already considered to have the toughest non-conference slates specifically because of Oklahoma and Clemson. Now the SEC could eliminate all of their easier games and just keep those? UT shouldn’t take the deal. It would make Pruitt’s job too difficult to navigate.